Note: I decided to publish this document at this time, 8 years after
it was sent on its way, in order to give readers who are not familiar with the
background of the apparent on-going conflict between myself and Dr. Arthur J.
Ness regarding various subjects, a clear view of the context for this
unfortunate state of events. Some historical background:

My professional relationship with Arthur Ness began when John Ward asked me
to accept him as a co-editor for my publication of the Königsberg
Manuscript. I had no prior experience in publishing lute related material,
hence completely trusted John Ward’s estimation that this would be enhance the
quality of the published book, and would simplify John Ward’s own work on this
project. I was told that Arthur Ness was a graduate student of Ward’s many
years before and that they had good experience working together on other
projects. The book was finally published in 1989 and instantly received almost
universal acceptance by the lute community. The List of Subscribers,
published inside the book itself, reads like a Who’s Who in the lute world.

A year later, at the 1990 Boston Early Music festival, both Ward and Ness
approached me with a project of publishing a series called Monuments of the
Lutenist Art, to which the acronym MoLA was soon given. The idea was to use
the success of the Königsberg publication as a vehicle for the publication of
other lute books. Chief among the works envisioned then was a second edition of
the Lute Works of Francesco Da Milano, first published by the Harvard
University Press in 1970 with Arthur Ness as the nominal author, the Lute Works
of John Johnson, Marco dall’Aquila, Pierino and a few others. We agreed in
principle to begin this project, and it was advertised widely in a special
mailing we did in 1992, and in various other forums. The text for this
advertisement, written by Arthur Ness, clearly spelled out the issues that were
agreed to.

Out of respect to our senior statesman of the lute, John Milton Ward, we
decided to first publish the Johnson book, and the others to follow in short
order. When the production of the Johnson book came almost to its close, a
serious difference of opinion between myself and Arthur Ness arose regarding the
guitar fascicle. It seemed that our differences were much too far apart to be
able to bridge them, with the end result that Arthur Ness resigned from his
responsibilities as General Editor of the MoLA series. At this point, I received
a phone call from Paul O’Dette. He was going to Boston in a few days and he
would see if he can patch up the differences between Arthur and me and see if we
can save this important project from going down the drain. He asked me to write
to him in detail and tell him my side of the story and he will do what he can.
This is the letter I wrote to him then (the text in red
are commentaries I am making today, and were not part of the original
letter):

(this address details are no longer valid. They are
given here as a reference only).

January 19, 1994

Dear Paul,

I appreciate your concern for the welfare of the MoLA
project. I am not sure what it was Arthur told you about our conflict, but it
appears that he told you a lot. Discussing differences of opinion with one’s
publisher with others, while one is under a valid contract to that publisher,
is, to say the least, a deplorable exhibition of poor taste, and a thoroughly
unprofessional decorum. Once he resigned and all his contracts with us were
legally terminated, Arthur would have the freedom to criticize me personally,
Editions Orphée and John M. Ward to his heart’s content. [On
January 19, 1994, the contract between Editions Orphée and Arthur Ness was
still in full force] Certainly there will be journal editors out there,
Julia Craig-McFeely [At the time I wrote this letter, Ms.
Craig-McFeely was only known to me through what Arthur Ness told me about her
and her review of the Königsberg manuscript. I was not pleased with her remarks
in that review regarding the technical aspects of the production, but we did
meet over coffee in Cambridge, England, a few years later and discussed this
most amicably]. for example, who will be delighted to give him all the
space he wants for knocking the MoLA project down and humiliating his teacher
and mentor John M. Ward. But as long as he is the General Editor of the MoLA,
and as long as he is contractually obligated to us, speaking to others about me
and John as he did in recent weeks is a non-starter. This would have never been
even remotely conceivable if his publisher was Sylvie Minkoff or Bruce Phillips.
I see no reason to be treated differently.

It appears that Arthur is under the impression that I have
committed a great crime in refusing to accept his transcription of the Johnson
book for guitar, the way it was presented to me. Hence, he communicated about
this with you, and with Tim Crawford, Peter Danner and Pat O’Brien. He may
have also communicated with others for all I know. In a sense, he had
arbitrarily appointed judges and had given them a one sided testimony. I think
it is time to tell you my side of the story.

The MoLA project came about like this: I have spent four
years tracking down the Königsberg Manuscript because John asked me to.
When I finally found it and secured the publishing agreement, it was John’s
idea to invite Arthur to collaborate on this. It was also John’s idea to start
the MoLA project and invite Arthur to be a Co-Editor of the series. It was also
John’s idea to start MoLA with a second edition of the Francesco, something I
was reluctant to accept at the time, since Chiesa’s edition was, and still [is]
currently available. But I do have a great deal of respect to John Ward and I
accepted his judgment in all these matters. This was in March of 1990, at the
Early Music Show in Boston.

The MoLA project was announced, right from the very
beginning, as having a guitar transcription fascicle “Fingered and Edited by
Matanya Ophee and others.” The original text for this blurb was written then,
in a letter dated May 1992 accompanied by a diskette of the same text, by Dr.
Arthur J. Ness. In other words, it was understood from the very beginning that
the guitar fascicles of the entire MoLA series were to be my responsibility. It
was also understood by all that my expertise in the matter of editing guitar
music is accepted and respected by all concerned. Originally, I also thought of
doing the guitar versions for other volumes in the series. But I realized that I
need to share the load here, and that’s why I asked Alan Rinehart to do the Weiss,
and Richard Falkenstein to do the Pierino, with the full agreement of
the General Editors of the MoLA, John Ward and Arthur Ness.

Arthur also asked to do the engraving work for the project.
Besides my own work, I already had several people working for me as SCORE
engravers and I could have used anyone of them. But Arthur indicated that he
needed the extra income and besides, as a Co-Editor of the series, he will be in
a better position to prevent serious mistakes if he engraved it himself. I
agreed. He got himself a computer, and I sold him the SCORE package at cost. As
the Russian proverb goes, No Good Deed Shall Ever Go Unpunished.

Back in November 1992, Arthur made some preliminary
conversions of the keyboard to guitar notation. He sent me some samples and
asked for my opinion. On receipt, I sent him several messages regarding what my
requirements are. Over the years, I have established an Editions Orphée “house
style” which served me very well. It has been copied by others, and I did have
the honor of receiving for it the Paul Revere Award for Graphic Excellence
for 1992. (For the 3rd volume of Pujol.) I know what I am doing, I know what’s
acceptable in the guitar world, and to a large extent, I am the person who
helped guitarists reach a consensus of opinion how guitar music should look
like. I am not sure I actually mentioned to Arthur the concept of my “house
style,” but I gave him precise parameters on how I want the guitar music to
look like. I have been doing this with engravers for some 15 years now, [and]
with few exceptions, I always received precisely what I wanted.

One of the principal elements in this style is the
requirement that whatever the source, guitar music printed today should be
re-notated to reflect a clear separation of the voices. I have had numerous
arguments on this subject with early 19th century purists such as Erik
Stenstadvold, Simon Wynberg, Brian Jeffery and others, who accused me of
spoon-feeding the player with an interpretive notation that may or may not have
had anything to do with the original composer. My rationale was that after a
concentrated study of guitar pitch notation, starting with its first occurrence
in 1758 to our day, I reached the conclusion that in the past, notation was more
the province of the publisher’s and engraver’s than the composer’s. Often
enough, this is still the case today. People did violinistic notation for guitar
not because it was better but because it was cheaper to produce. More lines per
page, less pages, less paper and metal plates to expend. Paper and metal
engraving plates were expensive commodities. My object as an editor, as Walter
Emery once put it, is not to produce what the composer wrote, but what he meant
to write, as best as I can understand it. Now, if anybody takes exception to
what I did, I always tell them where the source is, and they can go and check
for themselves. In many of my editions, I actually reproduced a facsimile of the
original so people can immediately see what has been done. I am telling you all
of this to emphasize that philosophically, I am all for an interpretive
transcription of lute tablature. It doesn’t matter to me if the source is
Elizabethan tablature, a ca. 1808 autograph manuscript by François de Fossa, an
1817 print by Andrei Sychra, or a 1993 composition by Roberto Sierra. The
notation for the guitar must be such that reflects the actual sound produced, without
being overly pedantic and tedious. It must be easy to read. In essence, my
point of view is in full accord with those lute scholars who, like John Ward and
Arthur Ness, believe in their right to express an interpretive, editorial
understanding of the original source. We saw eye to eye right from the beginning
and that was the basis for our cooperation.

During the month of November 1992, Arthur and I exchanged
electronically something like half a megabyte of text on the subject of how to
notate the guitar fascicle of Johnson, and as far as I was concerned the matter
has been resolved already then to my satisfaction. Arthur conveyed to me that he
fully understood what I wanted from him and had no specific objections for doing
it my way. I retain copies of this entire correspondence. What I required was
this:

1. The transcription of Johnson was made by John Ward. He
took the trouble to hire a lutenist (Douglas Freundlich) to insure that the KB
transcription is playable on the lute and does not contain any theoretical
polyphony which may look good on paper and be playable on the KB, but not on the
instrument for which it was intended—the lute.

2. The guitar fascicle of the same book, cannot, under any
circumstances, be a separate or a different transcription. At no time did either
John Ward or I agree to appoint Arthur Ness as a co-author of the Johnson book
and give him responsibility for making his own guitar transcription. The
information contained in the guitar fascicle must be identical to that
contained in the KB and both versions have one transcriber—John M. Ward.

The only difference between the two versions, besides the
transposition a minor third lower and the use of a single staff, was to be the
recalculation of note values, usually half the value of the KB, and normally
only in the galliards. (In the Pavans, the note values were retained, but each
bar was divided in two with a corresponding change in the time signature.) I am
the one who proposed this idea, and it was accepted at the time by both
editors—by John Ward with some reservations, and by Arthur Ness with
enthusiasm. [And for a very good reason: Arthur’s 1970
transcription of the Francesco, employs even a more drastic reduction of note
values.] The rationale here was that this is going to be a practical
edition for guitarists, people who may not be aware of current attitudes towards
this question. I hasten to qualify this: some guitarists are perfectly
capable of reading music in 3/2, 6/4 and other compound meters. The great
majority though, particularly the many students who would, hopefully, use this
edition as their introduction to Elizabethan lute music, are more at home with
3/4, 6/8 and 4/4. It is a tough call to make between the need to educate the
public and the need to sell enough copies to make this thing at least pay for
itself. I did not see any need to duplicate the KB transcription, in which all
the theoretical questions have been addressed by the author, and opted for
making the guitar fascicle more saleable, rather than more “correct” in
regard to note values. Arthur, who applied the same logic to his entire
Francesco book, agreed with me then.

3. I made perfectly clear that under no circumstances should
the guitar version contain any elements whatsoever which are not playable on the
guitar. What’s good for the KB and the lute, should also be good for the
guitar, particularly when the topography of the fingerboard of both (guitar
tuned 3rd in F#) is the same and the only difference is the string length. Now,
I accept that a player may induce a listener to believe that an internal voice
is continuing to sound when in fact it does not, as you told me you often do in
performance. I do not accept that an editor should presume to spoon-feed
the performer with pre-masticated information on where and when to do that. Any
performance directly from the tablature is an interpretive realization of the
voice-leading. Some people are better at it than others and they become Paul O’Dettes
and Hopkinson Smiths. Others are not as good at it and they may well find the
editor’s choice of interpretation a useful device. Back in 1972 Jack Duarte,
together with Diana Poulton came up with an interesting device in their
transcriptions of the Varietie. The idea was to notate theoretical
polyphony which cannot actually be performed, by writing it in full, but
distinguishing the performable notation from the unperformable with specially
designed slurs. The result was total clutter and unreadability. I may be wrong,
but as far as I know, no one edition of lute music for guitar published since
then had ever accepted the system.

The problem with notating theoretically correct but
physically impractical or impossible voice-leading is that in today’s market,
such editions are not saleable. Period. The level of critical review in the
guitar world is such that one cannot allow such editions to be printed, and hope
to survive in this market.

4. I also specified that horizontal displacement of voices in
a chord should be done only when absolutely necessary. For examples: when one
voice used a stemless note (a whole) and the other use stems, or when one voice
uses flags or beams and the other do not. I see no point in having a four voice
chord made up entirely of quarter notes (or halves or whatever) separated
horizontally. Separating the several notes of the chord horizontally does not
give the player any additional information about converting the symbology into
finger movements and thus create the sound which is not already contained in the
notation.

Daniel Benko’s transcriptions are famous for this silly
self-indulgence, in itself a poor attempt to emulate the style of Pujol, where
you see a six-note e minor chord where all the notes have a value of quarter,
and each note has a separate stem. It is so much easier to read when all the
notes of the chord share the same stem. Even when the notes of the chord are of
different values, or even dotted, sharing the same stem enormously simplify the
reading. Dieter Kirsch’s transcription of the Santino uses this
approach, and to my knowledge, it has been accepted. At least, Peter Päffgen,
the publisher thereof, tells me that so far, not a single critical opinion of
the edition has been recorded anywhere, particularly in regard to its notation
methodology. Arthur’s claim that Kirsch’s edition was “discredited” is
based on what? Discredited by whom? where?

Recently, Arthur expressed the notion that what I am doing is
a “modified Kirsch.” That is utter non-sense. If anything, what Kirsch is
doing, is a modified Ophee. The Santino edition was never used by me as a
model and the only reason I ever mentioned it is because it is a recent edition
which reflects current attitudes towards this question. It is disingenuous of
Arthur to express any reservations today towards Dieter Kirsch. Last year, I
approached him with an idea of producing a mandora manuscript which the Glinka
Museum proposed to me and it was Arthur who suggested Dieter as a qualified
editor and transcriber of this volume.

I have exchanged views on this problem with many of the
leading authorities on the subject in the guitar world, and I am sure my view
represents current thinking on the subject. No one pays attention to Pujol-Benko’s
methodology and there is a good reason why these books are no longer in print.
Perhaps I need to mention here that it was Arthur himself who drew my attention
to this issue, when he asked me, back in November 1992, if his horizontal
displacement is “not too fussy.” I told him then that it was and that he
should not do it. He agreed and then went ahead and did it anyway.

To a certain extent guitar notation, as notation for any
polyphonic instrument as the piano or the harp, is conjectural. Guitar notation
is somewhat like tablature. For example, in a typical early 19th century guitar
arpeggio in p.i.m.a.m.i. texture, it is possible to precisely notate the
duration of the bass and the soprano, but notation of the middle voices must be
accepted as a generality which only tells the player where to place his fingers,
but not for how long. Try and notate precisely the durations of all the notes in
the first Etude of Villa-Lobos! [Eventually, I made up an
imaginary farce on this subject, and published it in GALI under the assumed
named of Jan T. Parazi.The
pseudonym used is an imitation of a children’s riddle in Hebrew. Say Jan T.
Parazi several times in a row...]

Guitarists have been struggling with this issue since 1770,
when Baillon published the first example of polyphonic notation “a l’instar
de la harpe o du piano” indicating a clear separation of voices. The issue has
never been decided in any final manner, and even today, you can still see modern
composers write guitar music as if it was a violin, something Arthur will hasten
to label as Schrade-type notation. The issue for me is simple: there is no
horizontal displacement in the KB, (except in the case of the interval of a
second,) because you have two staves to work with. The guitar should not be any
different. However, when this is squeezed unto one staff, certain adjustments
have to be made so the durations are clear. When you have a whole note as one of
the voices, of course you have to displace it, if it collides with a stemmed
note, so no one thinks it has a stem and therefore it is only a half. Similarly,
if one of the notes has a flag or a beam, it has to be displaced so no one
thinks the flag or the beam belongs to other notes in the chord. But if there
are only stemmed notes, of whatever duration, there is no need to do any
displacements, since all the notes will have to be struck on the same beat. Some
will be held for a quarter, and some will be held for a half, but there is no
confusion. It is a trade off between the clarity of the polyphony and a clarity
of the rhythm. One is as important as the other, but since we have already a KB
version, and the guitar fascicle is clearly labeled as a “practical edition
for guitarists” I see no reason to compromise clarity of rhythm in favor of an
academic clarity of the polyphony. Should we be doing a book with only a
guitar transcription, with no KB to go with it, one might wish to re-examine
this policy. However, judging from Dieter Kirsch’s experience with the Santino,
I see little or no problem with this. (Note 1)

Someplace along the line, Arthur either decided that my
requirements are not his concern, or simply forgot about them. Had he disagreed
with me at any time, we could have discussed the issue and resolve our
differences amicably. I never heard from him anything about this issue until he
finally submitted the last engravings. The final submission of material for the
Johnson was agreed by all concerned to be July 15th 1993. Based on this, I
launched the subscription drive and announced a publication date of September
15th [1993!].

I finally did receive the material in November 1993, with a
specific request from Arthur to look over the guitar notation and say what I
think about it. I did precisely that, and all hell broke loose.

One thing became apparent: the guitar notation was done by
Arthur on the basis of his original KB input, before this was corrected
for unplayability by Douglas Freundlich. In other words, if there were
unplayable spots in the guitar, it wasn’t Arthur fault and there was no
problem. All that [was] needed to be done is
compare the last version of the KB to the guitar and make sure that they agree.
I could not then, and I do not understand now, why Arthur had taken such an
exception to a simple request such as this, particularly when I did not ask him
to do it—I was going to do it myself.

When I started going through the entire book with a
magnifying glass (Like this: guitar notation on the screen, KB printout on the
left and tablature printout on the right, reading all three of them bar by bar,
directly on the guitar.) I found some really alarming things committed by Arthur
in the process for which he had no authority nor permission from either myself
or the author.

He had taken upon himself to do an entirely different
transcription for the guitar than the one made by John Ward. He not only
converted the KB notation, he also went back to the original sources and checked
everything. This was highly commendable and if he did find some errors in John’s
transcription, I am sure he communicated his find to John. However, for whatever
reasons of his own Arthur Ness committed here a serious breach of professional
etiquette by betraying the trust of John Ward as his co-editor, and by executing
an engraving for which I paid him good money, and which is not what he was
contracted to do. As the engraver of the guitar version, he was not
expected nor permitted to:

1. change the original voice leading as envisioned by John to
something which he thought was more correct.

2. Change John’s note values (relatively speaking) to
durations, particularly in the treble and middle voices, which are, to put it
mildly, wishful thinking and cannot be executed on the guitar unless you had six
fingers that are a foot long each. This is not an exaggeration. See examples.

3. Insert on occasion musical text which God only knows where
it came from, since it is different entirely than the KB and/or the tablature,
without so much as mention to either John or me that he had done so, and what
was the basis or the source for his editorial change. One passage in the Marigold
Pavan was something I could easily check, as I happen to have on hand a copy
of the Königsberg Manuscript from which it came . . .

4. Arbitrarily decide NOT to do guitar versions of the
bandora pieces, with the exception of the Almaine in which he combined
the lute and bandora versions into one piece which never existed before.

5. For whatever reason, did not execute a tablature version
for the Long Pavan. [That statement was not correct.
At the time, I simply could not find that engraving in any of the diskettes
submitted by Arthur. I eventually did find it and it went into the book.

On November 17th, we all met together in John’s house in
Cambridge and went over all of this. At the end of the day, it seemed to me, we
all reached a consensus of opinion. Arthur fully agreed with me then, in the
presence of John Ward and Doug Freundlich, that indeed we cannot allow any
unplayable passages to remain, and that indeed he was “over fussy” in
separating the voices horizontally. He even promised me to look over the guitar,
and let me have a list of places where his “Fussiness factor” should be
corrected. It was fully agreed then that the guitar fascicle would be published
as “Transcribed by John M. Ward, Scored for guitar by Arthur J. Ness, fingered
and edited by Matanya Ophee.” In fact, it was Arthur who suggested this
formula.

It was then that John discovered the missing bandora-for-guitar
transcriptions and asked me what can be done about it. Since Arthur was
complaining of some health problems, I volunteered to do these conversions
myself.

So I did that. Not knowing anything about the bandora or its
tuning, I looked up Ian Harwood’s article in the New Grove. According
to this, a six course bandora would be tuned something like a guitar with sixth
in G scordatura.

If one is to follow the logic of lute = guitar with 3rd in
F#, here it would be bandora = guitar with 6th in G. No sane guitarist would use
such a scordatura. This would require raising the pitch of the 6th string by a
minor third. It will either break before that, or at least impose enormous load
on the bridge and the soundboard. Replacing the string with a light weight
string is a viable option, but since the book contains only four short pieces,
it is unlikely anyone would bother with the result that the bandora pieces would
be entirely ignored. The perfect example of that folly is Ruggero Chiesa’s
transcriptions of Brescianello’s colascione music where a similar
tuning occurs. In some of the pieces, he does in fact call for a 6th in G
scordatura. I have never seen any of these pieces recorded or performed by
guitarists. Another silly self-indulgent mumbo-jumbo is Benko’s transcriptions
of Kapsberger’s chitarrone pieces. You never told me what you personally think
of Benko’s work, but I can’t believe you would take it seriously.

The thing to do, then, was to apply here this logic: the
tuning of the source should be emulated, if possible, but the important thing is
to make sure the music is reproduced on the target instrument as
faithfully as possible, without a wholesale chopping off of the bass line, in whatever
key it works best.

When done, I sent both John and Arthur copies of this
conversion. (Copy enclosed for your perusal.) [These are
now published in the guitar fascicle of theLute
Works of John Johnson]. The purpose was, as we always did it in the
past, to make sure that if a mistake has been committed here, someone else would
be able to catch it. And then, all hell broke loose once again, as if we had
never met in Cambridge and never agreed to anything there. If you so desire,
I will be happy to supply you with the diatribes I was bombarded [by
e-mail.] with by Arthur at that point. But I’d rather not. It’s bad
enough I had to read this abusive vituperation.

Arthur has absolutely no reason to be offended. Besides the
bandora pieces, which were done by me at John’s request and after we agreed
that Arthur is not responsible in any way for the guitar edition of Johnson, he
had not seen yet any of my changes to his “scoring” of the guitar.
The samples of my editing attached herewith, have not yet been seen by Arthur.
Judge for yourself then. After Arthur agreed to the elimination of the “fussiness
factor” and the putting in order all unplayable situations the end result is
something he should be actually happy with. It is disingenuous for Arthur to so
much as imply, as he did to me several times, that because I am not a famous
performer, I do not have the qualifications to judge what is or is not playable
on the guitar.

I tried to reason with Arthur any way I can. I even organized
this meeting in John’s house so that we could resolve all our differences face
to face. To have Arthur stick a knife in my back, and in a sense, also in John’s
back, is a tough medicine to swallow. To have him threaten me with “taking his
Francesco elsewhere” because he doesn’t accept that in the case of Johnson
he overstepped his authority and tried, surreptitiously, to assume authorship
for a book written by someone else, is not something I am going to accept
nicely. No, he is doing everything he can to discredit the Johnson edition, even
before it was published.

What had happened here, is that Arthur had tried to force me
to publish a guitar version of Johnson which is unsalable, unperformable, and
against everything this publishing house stands for, and against everything we
all agreed to many times. Since he couldn’t get away with it, he decided to
black-mail me with a threat—taking his Francesco elsewhere. So what am
I to do? agree to the inevitable demise of the publishing venture?

None of this would have been necessary, if we were dealing
with a rational person who can remember from one day to the next what it was we
agreed upon, or even discussed. I am very well aware of the word compromise, but
I cannot possible compromise the integrity of John Ward as author of the Johnson
book, just to assuage Arthur Ness imagined grievances. There aren’t any. I
cannot also compromise the financial well being of this venture by agreeing to
put out guitar music which is not playable on the guitar, or written out in the
most discombobulated manner possible, using a polyphony that could not have
existed in the mind of John Johnson, and certainly has not been proposed by John
Ward. Besides that, everything is negotiable. I would be the last one to make
any critical remarks about Arthur’s transcription of Francesco for the
KB. None of my business and outside my frame of competence. If he can find a
publisher that will agree to do it without a parallel guitar edition,
then there will be no problem. [As is well known by now,
Arthur Ness has not published a second edition of his Francesco book
since 1994]. But as long as he is contractually obligated to me, he will
have to accept a guitar edition under the terms we agreed to before.

As for now, the Johnson is proceeding nicely, albeit several
months behind schedule. Just about ready to send it to the printer. All three
fascicles will have the same identical information, the same organization, the
same table of contents, and the same high level of scholarly and graphical
excellence. I am proud to be associated with this project, and I shall do the
utmost I can to insure that its author is happy with the result. Lutenists and
guitarists world wide would only benefit from this. As for the rest of the MoLA
project, I shall resist all efforts by Arthur Ness to sabotage it. I would like
to do it as neatly and as quietly as possible. But forced to protect my
credibility and the viability of this publishing house from any threat
whatsoever, I shall have to take whatever actions are necessary to achieve the
purpose. Otherwise, I might as well go fishing. Literally.

I would suggest that at this point in time there is little to
be gained by any further communications with Arthur Ness. His actions so far
exhibited a high degree of irrationality and I have a feeling that he is not in
a very stable state of health now. You suggested you will go and talk to him.
You will do of course, whatever you think is right, regardless of what I say.
But I have a feeling that letting Arthur come to his senses on his own, and
giving him time to do it, will be a better course of action. Perhaps, once he
had seen the published Johnson, he would realize how silly and how
counter-productive this whole exercise had been. [That,
Alas, did not happen!]

You and Pat can help us by sharing your expertise and
insights with the author of the book, John M. Ward. The sooner we get your
corrections, the sooner we will be able to publish Johnson and get the entire
MoLA off the ground successfully. [That too, had never
happened. At the time, I submitted full sets of proofs to both Paul O’Dette
and Pat O’Brien, in response to their demand to be part of this
project. I have never received any marked up proofs from either of them].

Nuff said.

CC: John Ward, Peter Danner, Pat O’Brien, Tim Crawford.
(Portions of this letter were sent to Tim on a previous occasion.)

[The following examples were printed at
the end of my January 19, 1994 letter, copies of which were sent then to the
people listed above. I have never heard from Paul O’Dette about his meeting in
Boston with Arthur].

Example 1.

This bizarre figure must be an oversight that some how made
its way into the keyboard, before Doug Freundlich had a chance to catch
it. Nevertheless, if Arthur considers himself a knowledgeable transcriber, for
either guitar or lute, he should have brought this to John’s attention, before
it was presented to me as a final engraving ready to print. This was exactly the
spot which I indicated to Arthur as being problematic and which prompted his
tantrum There are about 60 similar occurrences throughout the book. [the
A example is the engraving of this passage as it was submitted to me by Arthur.
The B example is what I had to to do to render this playable and the way it was
eventually published.)

Example 2.

Measure 9 is an example of Arthur’s assumption of
authorship. There is nothing in John’s KB transcription to indicate that the
soprano voice is equal in duration to the bass, and that the melody actually
resides in the alto, not in the soprano. The question is not which is more
correct. For all I know Arthur may be right and John is wrong. But this is not
Arthur’s book. As the engraver he cannot assume editorial authority and
apply his judgment in preference to that of the author’s without first
securing the author’s agreement. Guitaristically, this works either way. What
matters to me is that the author’s text has been corrupted without his
knowledge or agreement. I cannot allow this to happen at Editions Orphée. There
are about 250 similar occurrences throughout the book.

Example 3.

As you can see, the same assumption of authorship here, changing the
durations of some notes in the opening chords of mm. 44, 45 and 46. Not much of
a problem in 45 and 46, but m. 44 is another matter. The notation requires the
player to hold the tenor and alto voices for the duration of a dotted half. How
do you do that and still move to fret 8 for the high C?
[of course it could be done by shifting to position IX, but that would have been
a distortion of the indications in the tablature]. I find it insulting
that Arthur would question my judgment on this question, just because I am not a
world famous performer. Here is an example of a scholar taking upon himself
responsibility in an area in which he clearly have no demonstrable expertise (Note
2) and then throws a tantrum when confronted with his incompetence. The
point of discarding such notation is that those who write for guitar magazines
today, Graham Wade, Angelo Gilardino, Donald Bousted, Garth Baxter, to mention a
few names, pounce on things like that with glee as a perfect proof of the publisher’s
shortcomings. I cannot afford to let this happen. There are approx. 180 similar
occurrences throughout the book.

Example 4.

Here is an example of an entire passage in the guitar which
uses a totally different musical text than the keyboard. How did this happen? I
would grant Arthur this benefit of a doubt: perhaps his text in the guitar is a
more correct reading of the source and the mistake is in the keyboard. If this
is in fact so, it is an inexcusable sloppy scholarship on his part to insert the
“correct” text in the guitar but not in the keyboard or the tablature. It is
doubly inexcusable if, as the engraver of all three fascicles, he executed this
without so much as alerting his employer, me, to a discrepancy in the
production. If he is right, he is wrong not to have brought this to anybody’s
attention. If he is wrong and his reading of the source is faulty, then you can
well understand the problem I have on my hands. There are about 25 similar
occurrences throughout the book.

Example 5.

I agree that Arthur’s is a better representation of the music than the KB.
Hence, I suggested to John we retain it, with a slight modification of the third
beat. (Note 3) Even though it was done
surreptitiously, it is still a good idea. Final decision is, of course, in the
hands of John.

M. 8: Note: the tablature ciphers are vertically aligned,
indicating that all notes of the chord are to be played at the same time. In the
keyboard transcription notes are all vertically aligned with the soprano and
alto sharing the same stem. What useful purpose is achieved by horizontally
displacing the same notes in the guitar? Why sharing the same stem in my version
is the awful bogey man “Schrade type notation”, or the more recent “modified
Kirsch”, and the same sharing which occurs in the KB is not? A C Major chord
in the first position does not acquire any hallowed connotations of a
super-sophisticated counterpoint and polyphony, just because it is a couple of
centuries older than the same C Major chord in the first position originated by
Carulli or Sor.

M. 9: The first and third beats are another typical example
of the problem expressed in Example 3 above. Examples of this nature are too
numerous to count. It took me some three weeks of concentrated work to undo all
this damage. Now, in retrospect, it would have been faster and cheaper to simply
discard the entire Ness engraving of the guitar and start from scratch.